“I called, ‘Viley, Viley, my boy!’ three times, at the top of my voice. I used to call him so in the nursery, and he always liked it. I canʼt make out why he did not answer, for he must have been close by—though the bushes were very thick, certainly. At that instant, before I had time to jump down into the covert, a woodcock, flushed, perhaps, by the sound of my voice, crossed a little clearing not thirty yards in front of me. I forgot all about my determination not to shoot that day, cocked both barrels in a moment, but missed him clean with the first, because a branch of the hedge flew back and jerked the muzzle sharply. But the bird was flying rather slowly, and I got a second shot at him, as he crossed a little path in the copse, too narrow to be called a ride. I felt quite sure that I shot straight at him, and I thought I saw him fall; but the light was very bad, and the trees were very thick, and he gave one of those flapping jerks at the moment I pulled the trigger, so perhaps I missed him”. “That ’ee doednʼt, Meester Craydock. Aiʼse larned ’ee a bit too much for thic. What do ’ee call thissom”? Here he held up the woodcock. “Meester Craydock, my lard, be the sprackest shat anywhur round these pearts”. Poor Mark knew not that in his anxiety to vindicate his favouriteʼs skill, he was making the case more black for him. “Mark Stote, no more interruptions, if you please”, exclaimed the coroner; “Mr. Nowell, pray proceed”. “Dwoanʼt ’ee be haish upon un, my lard, dwoanʼt ’ee vaind un guilty. A coodnʼt no how ’ave doed it. A wor that naice and pertiklar, a woodnʼt shat iven toard a gipsy bwoy. And his oyes be as sprack as a merlinʼs. A cood zee droo a mokpieʼs neestie”. Cradockʼs face, so pale and haggard but a minute before, was now of a burning red. The jury looked at him with astonishment, and each, according to his bias, put his construction upon the change. Two of them thought it was conscious guilt; the rest believed it to be indignation at the idea of being found guilty. It was neither; it was hope. The flash and flush of sudden hope, leaping across the heart, like a rocket over the sea of despair. He could not speak, but gasped in vain, then glutched (to use a forest word, which means gulped down a sob), and fell back into John Rosedewʼs arms, faint, and stark, and rigid.